“Healing does not erase the past, and the point of healing is not to forget what has happened. Old memories from hard moments may come up even after deep healing has taken place, but what shifts is how we react to them when they arise. If the intensity of the reaction is decreasing, then real progress is being made. This has nothing to do with suppressing the reaction; it is just a measure of what is actually happening in the mind, It is possible to feel your truth without getting consumed by it or letting it control your behavior.”
Yung Pueblo
“Most people walk the earth unaware that they are not seeing with their eyes. Instead, they are seeing with their emotions, and often these emotions are just the echoes of their past hurts. Many fall into cycles of projection where they are taking their inner roughness and emitting it out into the world. Deep healing and emotional maturity begin when you turn your attention inward. The ability to see yourself as you move through the ups and downs of life, without running away or suppressing your feelings, enhances your understanding…”
Yung Pueblo
“We generally have a volcanic attitude toward our own intrafamily annoyances and frustrations, not expressing them openly until they have grown so strong that it is impossible either to put them sensibly or hold them back. The eruption usually either provokes or occurs during a family squabble, when all parties involved have lost their tempers or are scared stiff. At these times no one listens carefully, and criticisms are exaggerated; we tend to characterize the actions which upset us, not as temporary and reparable failings, but as the products or ingrained vice or genetic debility. Thus expressed, our anger not only fails to correct disorder but rather becomes an injury which prolongs it. To say that we lack self-control is not enough. What we lack is the courage and providence to have expressed ourselves sooner.”
Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living (Page 88)
“In Meditations, Marcus [Aurelius] talks about how he had a good day because he escaped anxiety. Then, he actually corrects himself, he goes ‘Actually, no, I didn’t escape it, I discarded it because it was within me.’ He’s realizing that he is the common variable in all the situations that cause him anxiety, just as you are. Anxiety is within us. We want to work on [controlling] it and thinking about it so it doesn’t rule our lives — or ruin our lives.”
Ryan Holiday
“Sadness, anxiety, grief, loss, fear and all other heavy emotions are a normal part of life. Trying to erase them is unrealistic. Instead, your energy is better spent feeling them in a balanced manner. Knowing that there is something in them for you to learn, to process, and to eventually let go. Letting yourself feel the heavy things is not the same as getting stuck in them. Being okay with not being okay is a skill that helps you not get dragged down by challenges.”
Yung Pueblo
“The storm may be powerful, but no storm is endless. Giving space to what you feel is always valuable because it is an essential part of healing and letting go, but if you let it take control then it will be too easy to fall into past patterns. Being with it is better than becoming it. There is a subtle space you should become more familiar with, the space where reclaiming your power is truly possible – the space where you can feel a fire burning within you without giving it more fuel.”
Yung Pueblo
“We can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.”
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Page 277)
“It would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness forever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in.”
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Page 179)